These data suggest that there are added factors linked to racial status that adversely affect the health of disadvantaged minority populations in the United States. In seeking to understand these striking burdens of race, researchers are pursuing three lines of inquiry. First, the measures of SES are not equivalent across race. For example, compared to whites, college-educated blacks are more likely to experience unemployment, employed blacks are more likely to be exposed to occupational hazards and carcinogens even after adjusting for job experience and education, blacks have lower wealth at every level of income, and have less purchasing power because the costs of a broad range of goods and services are higher in Black communities (Kaufman et al. 1997; Williams and Collins 1995). Second, there is increasing attention to the need to capture exposure to health risks over the life course. Racial/ethnic differences in childhood SES and early life psychosocial and economic adversity are likely to be important contributors to racial disparities in adult health. Third, researchers are exploring the multiple ways by which racism can adversely affect health (Jones 2000; Williams 2004; Ahmed et al. 2007).
